Wendy Whelan Talks About Retiring On Her Own Terms – Despite Career-Ending Injury

“The doctor didn’t know to what degree the hip injury was when I went into the surgery. And a one-and-a-half-hour, two-hour surgery ended up being a four-hour surgery. And after the surgery, I was – I couldn’t weight-bear for two months. I was on crutches for two months. And I was very often in a machine that kept my – the circulation going in my leg so that we could try to build new cartilage, grow new cartilage. So I did the best I could do to rehabilitate myself and got back slowly and still had troubles and tried to figure it out. Nine months later, I got back on stage and then performed a few more months. And then I retired from the New York City Ballet.”